


and dream of sheep

by idlewheel



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, alternating povs, and baby amy to grown up amy, will be from baby jake to grown up jake
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-14 14:03:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14137545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idlewheel/pseuds/idlewheel
Summary: Soulmate AU- in which your dreams are not your own, but your soulmate’s memories. this is a story about the missed opportunities, the waiting and the finding.





	1. Jake: Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> title from the Kate Bush song.

****

JAKE: Part 1

* * *

When Jake has his first official dream, he’s three years old.

Later, when he finally meets her and all the dreams cease to exist, this is the one that remains out of the thousands of them. It’s of big blurry faces gazing over and warbled-like voices as they coo and awe.

For years before that, Jake’s dreams were filled with disarrays of blue and pink; childish dreams of lollipops as big as heads and button noses on bears. When he’s three, however, it all changes.

These dreams are not like any other, it’s like he’s watching someone else’s life, someone whom he doesn’t know and whom he has yet to see.

They are nightly borrowings of someone else’s memories. 

But he’s confused by these grey, thundering dreams. When he awakes crying, his parents sit him down and tell him the truth. The truth of soulmates and dreams that will inhabit his own until he meets them.

_Jake, honey_ , his mother says _, dreams are memories that they’re having and this is life’s way of introducing them to you._

Jake’s apprehensive of having someone else’s memories as his dreams; doesn’t know how to react. He also recalls the scary figures he saw in those dreams and fears for his soulmate. Hopes that these scary things are not as frightening to them as they are to him. His mother explains to him that since his dreams just started, his soulmate was probably a baby. Jake didn’t know what to do with that information; he didn’t know how to take care of a baby.

Babies were so soft and doughy, it’d be like hanging out with a loaf of French bread. He did have a baby turtle though and wondered if the baby was as quiet as Leo or as scaly.

Most nights, Jake would try to stay up as much as he could, hoping to keep these memories out of his brain. These nights were the hardest because his eyes would start drooping as he stared at the walls in sheer concentration and he’d fall into an even deeper sleep.

When Jake turns six, his family throws him a big party. Part of him thinks it’s just his dad overcompensating because Jake caught him kissing Mrs. Smith last week, her red lipstick like sores down his throat.

But, part of him wishes that it’s because he’s finally six and they’re just here to celebrate _him._ Gina, the daughter of her mom’s best friend, attends his party and makes him play hide and seek. After only six seconds of searching for him, she gives up. Jake listens to the commotions of his party from inside his mother’s closet and between her leopard print sweaters, he slowly falls asleep.

It’s been three years since that first dream and they’ve since evolved from scary figures to long black tendrils wrapped around hands. When his mom finds him in the closet, fifteen minutes later, he’s still asleep.

Jake’s dad leaves when Jake is halfway through seven. He sits on his bed and listens as his mother tells him that his father no longer lives with them. Jake stares at his Ninja Turtle shoes—the ones that light up with every step—and taps his feet together, making the lights in their eyes flash. It casts a slight lighting on the floor, like a storm is fast approaching but it doesn’t compare to the one that is inside his chest. Heart and debris alike beat quickly in his chest, as if racing for something.

His mother’s eyes are soft and dark but kind, shadowed by half-moons of purple that showcase she’s been crying. She hunches over and stares into his eyes. Jake urges himself not to look away.

“Do you have any questions?” she asks softly, like tiptoeing in the darkened quiet.

“No.”

His mother nods slightly and straightens up to leave, but Jake stops her with a call of his voice. She turns over at him.

“Yes, honey?”

“But, you’ll still have dreams about him, right?”

And her eyes get sadder than he’s ever seen.

“No, honey. The dreams stop when you meet them, remember?”

After that, Jake starts cherishing his dreams, holding them tight against his chest. He wishes he could stuff them into his pockets, replaying them only to himself and keeping them far away from anybody else.

Because, what if it also ends with a hush-yelled conversation and a loudly shut door? And, what if, like his mother, Jake doesn’t have his dreams to hold onto anymore? What if, like his mother, half-moons of sorrow make home under his eyes and he has nothing to bring heat to the dense cold in his chest?

So, he starts documenting them.

Every time he has a dream, he writes it down into an old notebook of his mother. Usually, he wouldn’t remember them fully, but he’d write down what slight edge he did remember.

( _much, much later, these pages would be torn from these notebooks and these recalls of dreams would be used to wrap a wedding bouquet. the most legible would be bedtime stories for his children before they went to sleep and dreamed of their soulmates. but that’s a story long to come)_

However, most of the dreams remained foggy, as if he was seeing them through a piece of warped plastic or dirty glasses. His mother assured him that this was normal, that the dreams were never going to be one hundred percent clear.

Gina told him that her dreams were dark, like light was turned off. That scared Jake. Gina, however, would tuck her hair behind her ears, pushing her too-short bangs to the side and say, “It’s totally cool. It’s like my mom says, a little surprise keeps them wanting more. That’s why I squint a lot, because I see everything blurry and my soulmate won’t be able to see my dreams super clearly.”

All that squinting gave Gina was a perpetual headache and thick glasses. Despite it, she didn’t stop. Not until she met her soulmate did she allow herself to see. Literally and figuratively.

* * *

As Jake grew, the dreams went from blurry heads and to tiny fingers on ivory keys and later, so many books that Jake burned one of his mother’s old romance novels to give his soulmate some kind of sign.

_Please, I hate books. I need you to stop reading. I’m tired of seeing them in my dreams._

But, the piano, that he could do with. His mother had recently shown him _The Phantom of the Opera_ , and now Jake was obsessed with organs and masks. He figured that piano was the closest thing to an organ.

He would practice on the old piano in the apartment. He didn’t know anything other than Mary Has a Little Lamb and Happy Birthday—his piano lessons had stopped long ago. He stops when in one of his dreams, her fingers dash up and down the keys, far advanced from his crappy piano playing.

But, he wonders what they dream about, what part of his day they’re allowed access to. Did they see him cry when his father didn’t come to his eleventh birthday party? Did they see Marcia Foley kiss him behind the jungle gym at lunchtime?

It totally wasn’t his fault, he wished they’d know, Marcia was dared by Rita McKinnon. If not, Marcia had to eat a slug found at the corner of the playground. Jake was glad that his lips went above a slug, even if Marcia’s face puckered up with slight disgust afterwards.

But, his skin blushes at his soulmate watching him cry when Leo Washington broke his transformer in the playground. Or when he refused to kiss Ashley and he had to eat the slug he saved Marcia from eating.

He fears that she’s never going to want to meet him and instead, he crafts a plan to look at cool things. Things that he thinks they’d like, like books and ugly flowers. (He had somewhat deduced his soulmate was a nerd.)

He urges his mom to take him to the public library and it turns out to be tremendous fail. Jake’s mind wanders every time he tries to read anything, looking over his book at the grandpa that reads to the children in the corner.

Soon, he doesn’t even go towards the books and instead sits among the others as the grandfather reads to them.

After this, he gives up. He scuffs his shoes in disappointment on the way home but then, the sweet smell of jasmine hits him. Mrs. Rudmore’s house. Her garden. His heart nearly bursts.

Mrs. Rudmore was an eighty-year-old widow whom the neighborhood kids called a witch because of her long white braid and the perpetual frown on her face. Jake sneaks into the garden, slithering on his belly like a snake until he reaches just what he wants. The pretty blooming flowers, the bushes, the things that he knows his soulmate is going to love. He does this daily after school, telling his mother that he’s going to Gina’s house afterwards.

Jake never takes anything. All he does is sneak into the garden with all the pretty flowers in the back and stares at them. At the blooming tulips, the deadly oleanders, crisp white roses. He sits among them and lets the breeze blow by him, lets the sweet smell of them wash over him. He knows that dreams are void of sound and smell but wishes they’re able to see the way the flowers sway in the breeze in his dreams. The hairs on his arms rise with each wave of sweetly smell the wind brings.

He wonders how a woman so scary could create something so beautiful.

He finds it out three months later, when she catches him. Her son, Leeroy, holds Jake by his collar as he stutters out his reply. He tells them of his soulmate and wanting them to see the pretty flowers. Mrs. Rudmore’s eyes soften and after that, she leaves the gate unlocked for him.

She watches from the kitchen window as he lays his backpack as a pillow and stretches onto her grass. In the spring air, the flowers flow like dancing fairies and some rain down on his face. He lets them bury him, taking a jasmine in his hand and twirling it like a ballerina in two fingers. She invites him in for tea and shows him old folded photos of her soulmate, a tall blonde man who slowly turned into a hunched, bald wrinkled ball of a man.

“His name was Nathaniel,” she says, voice dreamy and airy so light that the wind could blow it away, “and he loved me like no one ever loved before.”

Jake can’t believe she’s not the wicked witch this side of Hudson. She smiles at him but her long braid still reminds him of a rat tail and he fears it’s going to levitate and choke him.

“I vowed that I wouldn’t cut my hair after he passed,” She explains, patting her thick braid. She leans in and smiles at Jake, “Plus, if it keeps the neighborhood kids away from my oleanders then hooray.”

Jake takes a bite of his sugar cookie, dusting the crumbs off his school uniform and asks her, “Do you miss having him in your dreams?”

“Yes,” she says. “But, you’ll always have the memories. You won’t need dreams Jake, when they’re next to you.”

He wants to tell her of his parents and the six months that have passed since he last saw his father and that maybe, things don’t always go like that. Instead, he finishes his sugar cookie and wishes his soulmate sees this tonight. This is something that he wishes to share with them.

But, his soulmate never meets Mrs. Rudmore.

* * *

His dad comes around one March night, no speck of shame on his face. His old mustache is exchanged for skin soft and shiny. He takes him out for lunch, as if this will make up for the fact that he hasn’t as much dropped a phone call in months. 

They go to his apartment afterwards, a total piece of crap in downtown Harlem and Jake’s dad puts on a movie that came out a few years before. Jake had seen the previews on TV and had urged his mother to take him but she never did, citing it too violent for Jake.

But, his dad puts the movie on without thinking it twice. Jake is too young to notice that this is his father’s way of keeping him from asking questions about his return and the fact that the only thing they’ve spoken about is popular culture. Not about the eight long months, or unattended birthday parties.

Jake, however, is enamored by the movie, eyes wide and unblinking through it all. His dad is asleep by the time it’s over and Jake puts it on again and again. Jake doesn’t sleep until much later, when the movie credits are rolling and the dark night sky is turning into a peachy morning.

_In Queens, his soulmate groans and turns in her sleep as visions of guns and white tank tops flash behind her eyelids; it’s the first of many Die Hard dreams. Somehow, she never sees the movie until he shows it to her two weeks into their relationship years later._

* * *

Jake’s friendship with Mrs. Rudmore continues. Jake stops by everyday afterschool and helps her tend her garden. She explains the Latin names of the flowers, and tells him the story behind every tree or bush.

She points towards the white roses, “Nathaniel gave me white roses the first time we met. They were meant to be for a friend of his in the hospital but our eyes met in that bus and that was it.”

Jake nods along. “So, you saw him and that was it?”

Mrs. Rudmore nods. “Yes. You just know Jake. Some say the Earth shakes or the stars shine brighter but for me, the whole universe was aligned. For me, the whole universe finally made sense.”

His mother once described meeting his father at a party. He was there with his girlfriend and saw his mother in the other side of the room. “It was kismet. He was the only one for me and that was that.”

What she neglected to tell him was that she was never just the one for him and that it was the reason for the empty drawers in her room.

* * *

When Jake turns thirteen, Mrs. Rudmore gets very sick. Jake’s mom takes him to the hospital to visit her and Jake brings her a bouquet of white roses. She’s not the woman he’s known all this time. The braid is gone, her hair loose like wild snakes on the bed. Her eyes are sunken in and slightly shut and she’s shrunken to half her size.

But, her smile is the same and it grows as she brings the bouquet of white to her nose.

“Thank you, Nathaniel.”

Jake doesn’t tell her that it’s him and instead sits beside her, trying not to think about the inevitable thing that’s coming.

He stays for three hours, watching her family drift in and out of the room, and then she calls him.

“Jake.” He stands and walks over, still slightly shocked at her face. “What is the Latin name for oleanders?”

“You know that I have no idea,” He says easily. She smiles and then falls asleep. It’s their last conversation.

He gets a call two days later from Leeroy. Mrs. Rudmore has passed away in her sleep and her house has been sold.

Jake asks what’s to happen to the flowers but Leeroy doesn’t know how to answer.

Jake gets three rose clippings in the mail from Leeroy, Nathaniel’s favorite. He plants them right outside his bedroom window. They grow sky high and even after he’s long moved out, Jake takes care of those blooming white roses.

* * *

When Jake turns fifteen, he gets his first girlfriend. It’s Marcia, the same girl who took his first kiss behind the jungle gym years before. She’s now a spry fifteen-year-old, only an inch below him with flaming red hair and pretty red lips. Jake hopes his soulmate doesn’t see Marcia in their dreams, they’ve got to be about eleven now he figures, no longer a doughy baby but a pre-teen with big thick glasses. (He had dreamt of his soulmate’s optometrist appointment a few months ago.)

Jake tries to ignore the guilt.

He feels guilty every time he kisses Marcia under the bleachers and he sees the spray of white oleanders behind his eyelids, as if he’s betraying Mrs. Rudmore and her lessons.

One day, he swears he sees a thick bramble of grey braid turning over the corner. But, every time he tries to focus on his soulmate, Jake is reminded of his mother’s sad eyes and his father’s dingy apartment with its empty rooms and week-old takeout. Also, of the plowed over flowers on Mrs. Rudmore’s house.

What it shows him is: everything ends and nothing lasts forever.

And, who knows when he’s going to meet them? Plus, Marcia’s fun. She likes the same things he does and she even watches Die Hard without falling asleep.

All of that repressed guilt, however, comes to full light when they’ve been dating for three weeks and she surprises him. She’s been acting strange for days now and the dumb boy part of Jake thinks it must have something to do with her parents going away for the weekend or something along those lines.

“Jake, promise you won’t tell anyone?” she says quietly. Jake nods, gazing adoringly at her cupid’s bow. Marcia makes fists with her hands and relaxes them a second later. Her eyes crinkle and stare at the ground as she speaks, “I think I’m a lesbian.”

Jake blinks, all thoughts of kissing her gone. “Oh.”

Marcia’s eyebrows rise as she tries to placate him. “I think. I mean, I don’t think-I’m-I’m like that but-” she stutters, words like floating balloons never caught in her hands. Jake’s eyes soften at the worry in her eyes.

“I’m not gonna tell anybody,” he says quietly. “I just…. why are you dating me?”

She cringes. “I don’t know. You’re the first guy I’ve ever kissed and for the life of me, I thought maybe you could, I don’t know turn me?” she groans. “Not that you can turn anyone, like you can’t. I’m living proof that.”

Jake nods along, trying to make sense of it all in his head. “Yeah.”

“But, when I dream of my soulmate…” she trails off quietly and starts again. “When I dream of them, I’m sure they're a girl.”

Jake’s mouth goes dry at the dreamy look on her face. He had thought of his soulmate, of course he had, but not with the intensity that shone brightly on Marcia’s. He never had that urge to fall asleep as soon as possible so he could catch a glimpse of his soulmate’s daily life. And now, he wonders if they did. And, he feels guilty, horribly so. Like he’s let down not only his soulmate but Mrs. Rudmore.

He has his journal, although the writings had grown less detailed and into one or two words of dreams that could be better described but Jake lacked the effort. They’ve never felt real. He never really thought about them as some tangible being out there whom he’s destined to be with.

They’ve always been illusive, just out of his reach.

After Marcia leaves quietly, Jake sits on his bed reading over his older notes and his ears flush with embarrassment.

_Birds_ , reads the one from two days ago. _Subway station_ , reads another.

He starts documenting his dreams again, leaving that dog-eared notebook by his bedside. If he’s to live the rest of his life with this individual he better start getting to know them.

And if it ends like his mother and father for them, then he’ll still have the memory of white roses and the slight reminder of love.

* * *

Highschool flies for Jake. The day of his senior prom, his friend Marcia meets her soulmate, a girl by the name of Norma. Jake watches as they talk in the corner and something akin to jealousy lights him from within.

His own date, Mrs. Stratton’s daughter Elisa, tugs on his arm as they make their way out the door. He and Elisa had history--if you called losing his virginity to her six months prior history. It had been awkward for weeks around them but as prom rolled around, it seemed only natural for him to ask her. 

He loses Elisa at an after-party at Liam Smith’s house and later finds her making-out with Wilbur from their Math class. Jake is about to leave when he spots Lina Molina atop the stairs. She had gone to prom with Wilbur, who was otherwise preoccupied. He never noticed her, she was always on the outskirts of everything, a blushing rose in a world of red.

But, as Jake glances up at her from the foot of the stairs, her eyes meet his. And then, Jake notices just how pretty her eyes are.

They date during the Summer, bleeding into Jake’s first semester at NYU. But, Lina overwhelmed with her school work, breaks up with him late September.

It’s Jake’s first real break-up since Marcia and he’s uncertain of the feelings in his chest, confused by them. His soulmate however, has just started a new romance, as Jake must see every night in his dreams. It makes him sad and slightly jealous but he forces himself to document the dreams every morning.

_…..a hand clasped in theirs and the gentle flip of butterflies in a stomach-_

Jake just wants it to be over but it doesn’t stop. Not for three years.

* * *

Jake awakes at once.

Jake groans, covering his eyes. Is this how his soulmate felt watching him fall for Lina? He sluggers around his dorm, eating three-day old food and staring at the walls. He turned twenty-one in a week and the Spring semester was over in two. He tosses the rest of the takeout box into the trash can and falls onto bed groaning loudly. He uncovers one eye and looks up at the off-white ceiling.

He counts the seconds, trying not to remember the dream, _their_ memory. He knows that once they meet they’ll probably look back at this memory and laugh.

_Remember when your stomach seized up with jealousy because I was dating someone? Ha-ha!_

(Little did Jake know that years later, one wedding later, when she handed him the pregnancy test, is when Jake would next remember this memory. Through the happy tears, Jake did smile.)

For now, Jake groans again and falls asleep.

* * *

Jake blinks his eyes open, reaching for the notebook as he always does. He sits up, still hungover from his 21st birthday celebration days ago. He tries to remember the dream, tapping his pen against the paper but all he remembers was the red and the white trimming, like-

Sal’s! He jumps up, throwing the notebook to the floor. He could recognize those red shutters anywhere and where they were sitting, by the windows, that’s his favorite booth.

He changes quickly, only brushing his teeth and slithering into his jeans from last night. He knows that he should shower or spruce himself up to meet the person he’s going to end up with but he runs out the door without a care.

Jake’s out of breath by the time he finally makes it there. He sits in that booth, facing the door. He looks into the face of everyone who walks in. Looks for thick glasses or anything at all. 

_Hello_ , he thinks, _you ma’am in the blue. Do you like reading a lot of books and did you obnoxiously rub your three-yearlong love-story in my dreams? All while I was going through a heartbreak? Also, I’m sorry if you had to see me having sex in your dreams but I really didn’t enjoy the onslaught of books in mine, so we’re even._

But nothing happens. If anything, his creepy staring scares several people.

After eight hours of sitting there, Jake gives up and instead trudges home. He chastises himself on the way home. It was a stupid idea. This whole thing was stupid and dumb. He should’ve not done this and he shouldn’t have eaten those two leftover pizzas Sal gave him.

But, had he not left, he would’ve looked into brown eyes merely ten minutes later, instead of in fifteen years. Had he not left, things would’ve been very different between them and their first meeting he would not remember with drunken blurriness.

But unbeknownst to Jake, this the first of many missed opportunities.

* * *

When Jake starts the Academy, he really doesn’t expect to be friends with Rosa Diaz. She sits in the corner of their class, arms crossed and a perpetual frown on her face. Everyone stayed away from the glaring curly-haired girl. Even Jake, who had heard she once punched a man so hard he swallowed his own heart.

Jake doesn’t fully know if she’s cutout for police work, seeing as she has a temper but she’s smart, smarter than all of them and she isn’t afraid to show it.

The others don’t tease, don’t let themselves even smile in a joking manner when she raises her hand to answer a question nor do they laugh at the lonely pencil she carries along with her.

She doesn’t write anything down, doesn’t even uncross her arms all class but she’s always the first one to answer. First one to get the answer right. But she has a bad temper and Jake finds this out when Fernandez makes a sexual joke about one of the other three other girls in their class.

“Think you’re such a man, Fernandez?” Rosa says, standing up from her desk.

Fernandez shakes his head, “No, I- “

“Why don’t you fight me if you’re such a man?”

Fernandez shakes his head, hands up, “Look, I was just joking- “

“No, do it. Fight me,” She says. The class starts crowding over them, forming a circle of curious ants. Fernandez tries to back off but Johnson pushes him back into the circle.

“I was just joking, Rosa-" But he never gets to finish his sentence as Rosa grabs his arm, pulling him towards her. Fernandez struggles, getting in a few good moves as they start to fight.

But then, Rosa pins him to her chest, arm around his neck and with her leg, she trips him. Fernandez overturns, his arm making a sick ‘crunch’ as he lands. Jake and the rest of the rookies cringe.

Rosa smiles.

The only thing she struggles in are the grueling exercises. Jake grimaces every time Captain Rowley makes them do push-ups. _A thousand_ , he yells, the spit from his mouth landing on his chin. Jake stares at it as he does the push-ups, trying to ignore the burn of his arms.

“Why are you staring at my lips so much, Peralta? You wanna kiss me or somethin’?”

Rosa snickers beside him and Jake’s eyes widen. It’s the first time he’s ever heard her snicker, or even laugh. Except that time she snapped Fernandez’s arm like a damn twig.

“You shut it, Diaz.” He says, pushing on the small of her back with the toe of his boot.

Rosa bares her teeth.

“Bet you I can finish them faster than you.” Jake says in-between breaths.

Rosa rolls her eyes but quickens her pace. Jake follows along, ignoring his crying arms. The rookies form a circle around them, hungry for a fight. Even Rodriguez, with his arm cast.

Rodriguez and Smith cheer Jake on, while the others urge Rosa. Even Rowley joins in, frowning, arms crossed in the back of the circle surrounding them.

Rosa wins, only by a fraction of a second. She stands and holds her arm out and Jake stands.

“I’d rather die than do a thousand.” He tells her when the crowd has dispersed and he has enough breath to speak.

“I’d gladly hold the knife.” She replies and pats his back. Jake smiles.

And it feels like an initiation to be her friend. Sort of. But, what it really is, is a promise.

* * *

During his time in the academy, Jake’s soulmate attends college. Jake’s dreams are littered with books upon books upon books. Jake’s time in college was a splendid blend of all-nighters, parties, and chugging three-day old half-drunken Red Bulls before finals.

His soulmate’s however, differentiates.

They read, a lot. So much that Jake only sees pages whenever he blinks. During late December, Jake stumbles into bed after a grueling day in the Academy and dreams of books. Jake wakes up with a headache.

Jake passes by Mrs. Rudmore’s house one day and stops by the fence, glancing at the cut oleander trees, the chopped roses, the neatly planted bushes that lie there instead. His heart lurches.

When May arrives, Jake finishes the Academy. Rosa graduates top of their class, though she tells Jake she’ll hurt him if he ever tells anybody. They’d become friends of sorts. Though, they most drank in silence in the dark corner of the bar.

Jake wanted to ask her about her soulmate or about her life but he mostly was scared to. Jake himself hadn’t done much dating in the past years.

Most of them went nowhere, most of them became one-night stands and a small percentage of them led to more than one night in bed. Not too many, though, and not since Lina does Jake really get his heartbroken.

Most of the time it’s the standard, _It’s not you, it’s me_ speech or the _I think we both have different interests_. He knows that there’s a soulmate out there for him, someone who will complete it all, but what kills him is that he doesn’t know how it’s going to take or just how long he’s willing to wait.

He meets a girl named Taylor and despite his best intention not to, he falls for her, hard. When he tells her one morning, her face goes white.

“I just don’t see it, Jake,” Taylor says and dresses quickly, leaving out the door.

“Right. Me, neither.” Jake says to the empty room, staring at the space that Taylor once inhibited.

Jake rolls over, curling into the warmth that Taylor left over and clings into the feeling of wholeness that won’t last long.

In the NYU campus, his soulmate falls asleep in the library, chin deep into her Calculus book. As she dreams, she sees the sliver of blonde hair as Taylor turns and walks away. She watches as her soulmate turns over and hugs the still-warm pillow to his chest.

The loneliness overtakes her in her sleep.

* * *

Two weeks later, is the first time that Jake and Amy are in the same room, the time they first touch and the first time Amy hears him say her name.

But they don’t speak or meet.

And that’s the last time they’re in the same room for another twelve years.

* * *

Jake takes another sip of his beer, sitting beside Rosa as they celebrate their assignment to the same precinct. Rosa taps on her beer glass, silent. They’d been there thirty minutes and Rosa had spoken a total of three words. Two of them being “Beer, please” and the other being his name.

“Hold on, I have to go to the restroom.” He says after a moment, Rosa nods but doesn’t speak.

The bar is unusually busy that night, with the people crowding over the booths, waiting like vultures for one to be free. As Jake walks along the busy bar, a soft hand slides along his. He stops in his tracks, glancing around the room in suspicion, feeling the touch like a lightning bolt. His heart beats quickly in his chest and eyes dilated, he tries to focus on the person who touched him.

But, he doesn’t see anything and continues his trek to the restroom, still shivering from the feel.

Jake doesn’t know it but that brush of hand against his own would be the hand that he’d hold until he turned old and grey and that hand would wear his grandmother’s old diamond ring.

And he also doesn’t see the tall dark ponytail that paused merely five feet away from him.

Nor the way that a simple touch of his hand took her breath away and made her so dizzy she ran to the empty booth in the corner of the room, angering the same vultures that waited for it.

So dizzy she shakes.

But their eyes don’t meet and the spell isn’t fully cast.

Not yet. Not now.

As Jake walks out of the restroom, he sees a blonde girl yelling for her friend, obviously having lost her.

“Amy!” the blonde girl calls. “Where’d you go?”

“Amy.” Jake repeats loudly, liking the way the sharp ‘a’ and the soft ‘y’ melt into his mouth. The blonde girl pushes past him with an eye-roll. Jake continues back to the bar top and finds Rosa.

“Let’s go.” Rosa scowls, looking around. “There’s too many people here.”

Jake nods, still remembering the touch of lightning.

“Hey, have you met your soulmate?” he says suddenly.

Rosa rolls her eyes and starts making her way through the crowd, pushing them out of her way. Jake follows after her like a shadow.

“Nah,” She says, so softly that Jake almost doesn’t hear her.

“Me, neither but…I touched someone and it was like...I don’t know.” He shakes his head.

“Maybe you’re just drunk.”

“Maybe.” Jake agrees, but looks around the room and into the many eyes of the patrons. 

They walk out of the bar and into the outside with a sky gilded with stars.

And there, outside the same bar that Jake would find out who she really was, is where Jake stares up at those stars and wonders where they are.

_Just a mere thirty feet away, in a booth as she celebrates her 21st birthday with her friend Kylie. Just a mere thirty feet away, as she thinks the same thing_.

 


	2. AMY: Part 1

When the dreams begin, Amy is far too young to remember them, at least for the first few years. But, she does remember the first one. Yes, she remembers, even after their awful first meeting and the sordid aftermath that was her staring at the walls of her hotel room in quiet contemplation, trying to clutch at dreams that were no longer there.

That night, she compared their loss to the evaporation of a wide sea or the destruction of a sandcastle by a powerful wave, attacking the sandy building quickly and fateful. Instead, in both her mind and in that metaphorical beach, a smooth trail of sand remained, desolate and alone.

But this one, the first one, stays; remaining in her mind like a song she can’t stop hearing--an earworm digging itself into the center of her mind.

This dream is of little hands playing in a sandbox, toy trucks, and a cold winter’s breeze.

When Amy is three, her mother explains the dreams to her. With wide unblinking eyes, Amy listens as her mother speaks. Her mother’s tone is the one she reserves for speaking to a non-family member, the one Amy calls her ‘grown-up voice’. It’s the tone that states she means business and a tone Amy knows she should not take lightly.

Despite her sharp inflections, her mother’s eyes are calm behind the brown, like smooth silk. Amy replays the sandbox dream in her mind, running it again and again like a fast film. In the dream, it was stormy, like a winter was fast approaching and she nearly shivers as she thinks that she’s seeing the day she was born through her soulmate’s eyes.

Her mother had once told her about the night she was born; she told her of the burrowing snow outside the hospital and her father’s elated face at his fourth child and first girl. But today, outside the sun glares down wickedly, like God beating a giant fist of irate fury and heat upon Queens.

“Do you have any questions?” her mother asks afterward and Amy shakes her head. 

All the doubts in her mind had been quelled and all the questions now had answers. Even at her youthful age, Amy understands that out there, somewhere in the world, there is a person that’s going to end up with her. This person is going to be the father to her mother; a person so wholly only hers down to the fact that they shared their memories telepathically.

 _Half of you_ , her mother had said and though her heart and body feel whole, Amy knows exactly what her mother means. She sees it in the face of her mother when her father returns home from work and she sees it in the face of her father when her mother wobbles out, pregnant belly before her.

Her mother stands then, groping the edge of Amy’s bed with white knuckles as her knees nearly buckle. She rubs her stomach as she walks towards the door. She was nine months pregnant and two weeks past her due date. Her body was in a state of constant exhaustion, skin and bones alike pushed to their limit. This was her sixth child and the _last one_ , she promised, but her mother was never too good a liar.

“Did you dream about dad?” she asks before her mother is gone. Her mother turns then, resting her tired back against the door frame. She grimaces as the edge digs into her back.

“Yes. For eighteen years.” She pants lightly, now pressing her hand tighter against her stomach. A thin sheen of sweat resides on her forehead and hairline. A bead trickles towards her chin and her mother doesn’t bother to wipe it away; it lands with a quiet splash onto her pink shirt, staining it red. Her mother grimaces again, pressing her back tighter against the door. “Amy, amor, can you-”

Her mother grunts loudly then, clutching her stomach with both hands. Then, Amy notices the sweat that has pooled against her mother’s neck and the puddle now on her carpet, right between her mother’s legs. Her mother pants from the door frame, mouth still stretched in the last syllable she spoke. An endless “you” on her lips.

“Mami, look!” she points to the puddle at her mother’s feet, thinking her mother’s wet herself but her mother’s face goes white with worry, or maybe pain. Or, both.

“No, no, no.” Her mother mutters, shaking her head but another wave of pain rides through her and she lowers herself onto Amy’s carpet slowly, like she’s tiredly crawling to a finish line.

Between screams, her mother calls 911 and her father. Her father, away on a case, doesn’t answer the phone and her mother curses at his voicemail angrily in Spanish as Amy holds the phone to her ear. Moments later, Amy holds the wet rag to her mother’s face as she groans and pushes.

For a moment, she’s glad her brothers are away at a friend’s house and that she gets to step in and be the big girl in the scenario. She holds her mother’s hand and pushes her sweaty hair back like she’s seen lots of people do in movies.

When a baby so red pops out onto Amy’s pink carpet, her mother starts to wail at his little blinking face. She makes Amy bring her some scissors and cuts the cord herself. The paramedics find them like that minutes after.

Her father rushes into her mother’s hospital room hours later and grins widely when he spots the little dark-haired baby at his mother’ breast.

“It’s a boy?” he asks and her mother rolls her eyes ‘yes’.

He carries the baby around the room, laughing and cooing at it, and Amy watches alongside her mother, swinging her legs up and down the chair. She’s still a little high on the ambulance ride and on the lollipop, the paramedics gave her for being such a good helper to her mother. She feels accomplished like she’s done something grand or marvelous.

After her new brother falls asleep, her father tells her just how proud of her he is and together, her parents let her name him. Her brothers, staying at Aunt Cecilia’s for the time being, would later lament their not being there, telling her how she could have named him something cool like ‘Megatron’ or ‘Tyrannosaurus’.

But, Amy thinks back to the movie she saw with her father the week before and thinks of the fun afternoon with her dad, just the two of them enjoying a movie.

“Oliver.” She grins, pink tongue peeking over her missing tooth. “Like Oliver Twist.”

Later, Amy remembers this day as the day she helped her mother give birth, the day she learned about the person who got her memories like daily mail and the day she saw life draw its first breath into another human.

_When it’s Amy’s first child’s turn to learn, her stomach balloons like her mother’s but she doesn’t give birth in her child’s room. No. Amy gives birth to her second child on the floor of her new precinct._

* * *

When Amy turns eight, her mother starts taking her to piano lessons. When she’s nine, however, is the last time she plays the piano. That day her mother picks her up halfway through her lesson and in the van packed with her brothers, they race towards the hospital. Amy yearns to know what’s going on, but knows better than to ask.

Instead, Amy sits between her brothers and in harmony, they remain silent, casting wide-eyed worried glances to each other's eyes. _Do you know what’s going on? No, do you? No._

Her mother is in that weird stage where she’s heavily worried but calm like there’s an eternal storm brewing in her mind. Once again, her belly is bellowing beneath her shirt, like the wind was being blown directly underneath and she rubs it in worry as her presses her foot presses on the gas pedal.

It’s not until later, when they arrive, that she finds out her father got hurt. The kids remain in the corner, bunched like a cluster of a Santiago constellation and her mother speaks quietly to the doctor. Amy’s heart races, thinking of her dad hurt somewhere and the rest of her brothers share the same emotions.

Her big brother Manuel holds her hand while they wait, acting like an adult instead of an 11-year-old boy. Her mother paces around the waiting room as the rest of them sit and wait for answers.

The doctor appears and quells their worries two hours later. _He’s fine_ , he says, _and you can see him_. Her mother and two of her brothers go first. Amy sees him last with Manuel.

Her father is pale under the hospital lights and there’s a white red-speckled bandage on his arm, wrapping the wound tightly and securely. Amy’s steps falter but Manuel pulls her forward.

She knew that her father was a detective just like her grandfather Oscar and she knew that it was sometimes a scary and dangerous life. But this, this is truly scary. She’s stunned at how much he’s changed.

Her father opens one eye slowly, smiling at her. She can see that he’s still in pain, no doubt feeling the ghost of the bullet on his arm.

“Hi, Tiger. Hi, Manny.”

“Hey, Dad,” Manny says, pulling Amy forward.

“Hi,” she says quietly.

Earlier that month, she told him that she wanted to be a detective when she grew up, just like him and his father. The next day, her father had arrived with a child’s police playset and Amy played cop the whole afternoon, arresting her Barbies and listing random police codes she’d heard her father speak as she did.

But now, she’s scared. Her father is not the warm sun that brought peace to her worries; he was shrunken and pale. Hurt and quiet.

Someone had shrunken and dimmed her sun and what if they did that to her, too?

When her father comes home days later, she spends days hiding in the background, aligning herself with the wallpaper. She’s scared that he’s going to be able to read the regret in her face and that he’s going to be disappointed in her.

One day, after days of hiding, her father calls her to his room. She begrudgingly makes her way and finds him resting, as he’s been for several days.

He sits up as she walks in, “Hey, Tiger.”

“Hi, dad,” She says from the door, lingering in the in-between. She feigns a poker-face but something tells her that it’s not convincing.

“So, you’re regretting being a cop, huh?” he begins as he sits up, wincing in slight pain. Amy takes a step back subconsciously and her father stops sitting up, letting himself fall back on the pillow slowly. “These kinds of things happen and that’s why we need people like you. Smart people like you. People that are going to keep us safe.”

Amy furrows her eyebrows in confusion, unsure of what he was trying to say.

He continues, “Out of all my kids, I was sure you were going to be the one that continued the legacy to be a detective but you’re better. You’re way too smart to limit yourself, Amy. You’re smart and strong--you helped your mother give birth and didn’t once cry. I know you have it in you. Smart and strong mix well, Amy. And you know what happens to people who have both?”

“No,” she says quietly.

“They become Captains or leaders. They’re the ones who tell people like me what to do and the ones that ensure that we’re properly equipped so things like this,”-he points to his arm-”don’t happen.”

Her eyes widen, remembering her dad’s last precinct holiday party. His Captain, Captain Rogers, was there and the world revolved around him at that party. The detectives and their spouses, circling him like the sun. Her father telling her that she could do that, be that person who directs and makes sure her detectives don’t get hurt, opens a brand-new world for her.

Her little feet patter to the edge of his bed, listening intently and her father smiles, relieved at the hopeful look on her face.

“Like Captain Rogers?”

“Yes,” he says. “Or even better.” Amy blinks, trying to fit that into her head. It was too much to grasp, like trying to grab at stars.

Being the only girl, it was only natural that her mother and she carry a special bond in a household full of men.

But, it was the opposite.

She was her father’s favorite and he wasn’t afraid to show it. He liked that he was going to be a police officer like her and that she fought with tooth, nail and with every shred of strength in her bones.

He saw himself in her and Amy liked that. Because, she saw herself in him, too.

“I could be your boss, dad.” She says with a grin and her father laughs.

“Only if I could have holidays off.”

The same smile shines on their faces.

* * *

When her mother is pregnant with her eighth child, her father gets offered a sergeant’s position. It means more money but also, longer days, more responsibilities, more power, more danger.

What follows this is long talks in her parents’ room, a shut door between the six boys and Amy. Through the Nordic wood travels the quietly whispered arguments, rising like an orchestral score.

In the end, her father turns it down when her mother gives premature birth to her brother, Leo. Leo stays in the hospital, trapped in a plastic box, while her mother comes home and paces around the house in worry.

The flowers bloom during this time in her dreams. It’s as if her soulmate knows of her little brother behind his plastic dome. The flowers that dance and shriek with color, make her feel better. She knows she’s probably wrong but the inquisitive part of her wants to know if this premeditated or if he’s trying to tell her something.

She begs her brother to walk her to the public library two blocks down and when he breaks, she grabs the big flower informational book by the encyclopedia section. She spends hours poring over the flowers’ meanings, Latin translations, and their nation of origin.

She finds the meaning behind the tulips, behind the roses, but it’s the oleanders that stick with her the most.

The book tells of the Greek myth behind the name of said flowers. In it, a young man named Lander drowns as he struggles to grasp a spec of oleanders to bring home to his beloved. His body is washed away by the ocean and his lover mourns his death, shouting, “O, Leander! O, Leander!” into the night sky. Later, when his body was recovered, they found the bundle of oleanders still clutched in his hand.

And thus, came the name.

She thought it was ironic that a man died whilst trying to grab those deadly blooms but, fitting, seeing as love could be like that too. Amy thinks back to her parents and the quiet fights between their bedroom door and the grim sadness in her father’s eyes when he trudged into the hospital room. She thinks of the shared look in her parent’s eyes as Leo slept bundled in wires and she thinks of the love that sung brightly in their faces.

How love, like the oleanders, was beautiful but maybe poisonous, too.

How love was real and flawed.

How, like the oleanders, someone could also drown trying to grasp it. While elsewhere someone chanted their name in distress with only the stars left to listen and only the moon left to cry along.

* * *

When her baby brother Leo arrives home three months later, he takes over as her father’s favorite and Amy doesn’t mind it one bit.

The flowers continue for years and then, one day, they stop. Amy recites the names of the flowers in her head as she sits in school, thinking of the missing flowers. _Tulipa, rosa and nerium. Tulipa, rosa and nerium. Tulipa, rosa and nerium._

(In a hospital in Brooklyn, the woman behind the flowers asks Amy’s soulmate about the Latin name of oleanders and in Queens, Amy answers for him.)

The flowers don’t return.

What follows is a month of wallowing grief and Amy sends some form of prayer but she’s uncertain if it ever reaches them. She hopes it did; he helped her before and now it’s time to help him.

_Later, years later, in times of hardship, she thinks about these memories. Of the flowers and the sun like a splintered yolk across the sky and despite the time, the comfort feels brand new._

* * *

When Amy turns fourteen, her brother Manuel finds his soulmate. She’s a short girl with shy green eyes and caramel skin. Amy is forced to watch them hold hands after they pick her up from school. As she does this, she can’t help but think of her own soulmate and the life he was living now.

The memories that were shared nightly told her that there was someone out there whom he was holding: a pretty dark-haired girl whom Amy dreamt nightly about.

It made her things that she had never felt before. Not jealousy, per say, but lonely, a feeling like a pool. Like she was filled with clear blue water and there was no end, just dark depth.

She finds this in Jackson.

Jackson Lewis and Amy are in jazz band together. He plays the flute while Amy plays the French horn and stalks him from behind her music stand. He’s tall and handsome, but nerdy in an awkward kind of way. While every other freshman is pining over the seniors, Amy pines for sophomore-Jackson.

She pines after him for months but despite Kylie’s urging, doesn’t ask him out. She signs up for volunteer tutoring her sophomore year and two weeks in, she gets assigned a tutoring project.

It’s Jackson. Her skin blushes and blisters as she tutors him in the library after school.

When he finally kisses her a month later, she nearly explodes. It’s awkward and not really what she pictured her first kiss being like, but, despite it, she floats among the clouds.

Amy wonders if this is what her soulmate felt with that dark-haired girl. Because if this is it, she forgives him for the long dreams of sorrow-filled grey after their breakup.

She forgives him for it all.

Because Amy feels it. Amy feels it, too.

Jackson goes to college in California towards the end of her junior year. Between apologetic eyebrow furrows, he tells her that he enrolled in the summer term to get started right away. She knows that this is probably the ending of it all; most likely where the metaphorical period is set in their relationship.

But, the relationship doesn’t end.

Their relationship continues well into his college years, with him visiting as much as he can and with long, winding long-distance calls. Her mother, annoyed with Amy’s constant use of the family landline, buys her a clunky cellphone.

When college applications start, Amy applies to different colleges in California and a sprinkle of some on the East side. She feels silly, like a girl blown up with helium making rash decisions, but she thinks back to the last three years and she almost floats out of the room.

Things are good, really good until they aren’t.

Jackson calls her two weeks into March, the spring of her senior year.

They’d been doing long distance for a while now and the calls were as frequent as ever, but that night, when his name flashes on the phone, she knows exactly what it is.

Amy sits on her bed, staring into her closet and listens to his apologetic voice in her ear.

She can hear the furrowing of his eyebrows in quiet apology and the earth splintering around her as he does.

 _I couldn’t stop it_ , he says to her prolonged silence. _She’s my soulmate, Amy. I just saw her and that was it._

Amy hums a response but her heart keeps breaking. She feels like china as she cracks from one small corner and falls into crumbling white debris. When he hangs up, Amy throws her UCLA acceptance letter into the trash and begins drafting her NYU college plans.

_Little did she know that across town, her soulmate was attending said college and that right then and now, as he slept off a hangover, he felt the sadness that seeped into her soul like water, making her bones heavy with grief._

* * *

When Amy graduates high school, her older brother Vicente graduates from college with a “useless gender studies degree”, as her other brother, Luis, so lovingly exclaimed. He planned to get his Masters and later Ph.D. to teach at university level. Their parents supported him in this decision but with Amy starting college soon, they needed him to get a job to help them with tuition.

He had a lot of trouble getting a job in relation to his degree and started working for the father of an old friend of his, Sal, who owned a pizza shop. The hours were not very good and the money was even worse, but Sal let Vicente do his homework while on the job and sometimes slipped him some money under the table to help with school.

Amy spent long afternoons that bled into night in the red vinyl booths, her favorite being one by the window. Usually, Amy would read a book as she drank her coke and waited for Kylie to get out of work and meet her there. They would do their homework together and daydream about college in the Fall. But since highschool is over, all the did now was just daydream about college as Amy read ahead for her classes. They were attending the same school for the thirteenth year in a row.

“There was a guy here earlier,” Vicente says, one day. “He was here for like eight hours waiting for his soulmate. He told Sal that she was here earlier, or something.” Vicente leans against the jukebox, taking advantage of the empty restaurant. His gum pops as he blows a bubble.

“Hmm,” Amy says, leaning over the jukebox, looking for a song. She’s not paying much attention; her brother was quite the chatterbox and she had learned to drown him out.

“Oh, my god,” He says quietly and Amy raises her head, already dreading whatever words are going to escape his mouth.

“What?”

“What if it’s you?”

Amy snorts and pushes her brother away. “Why don’t you go work before Sal fires you?”

“I’m serious. He even sat in the same- “

“Hey, Vicente,” Sal calls from the back, distracting her brother. “Can you get some cheese from the walk-in?”

“Run along.” Amy teases, back to playing with the jukebox. Her brother walks away with an eye roll.

“I have a degree in gender studies and here I am getting bullied by my little sister.” He mutters under his breath.

Amy settles for an old 80’s song her mother always played when she was young, and sits back in her favorite booth. Usually, she’d crack her book open but right now she’s distracted and it sits untouched beside her.

The sugar packets at the table are out of their compartment and they lie in disarray around the table, no doubt by the person that was there before her. She hums under her breath and starts putting them back, arranging them by color. As she does this, her mind travels, thinking of what her brother had said. She thinks it’s slightly insane to wait that long for someone, even if that someone is someone you’re destined to end up with.

But, the longer she glosses over it, the more her mind changes.

It’s kind of sweet, romantic even. Waiting an entire day to meet someone you’ve spent your whole life _literally_ dreaming about?

It _was_ sweet and something she’d do had she known what her soulmate really did or where he was.

Then, she thought of Jackson and her heart panged in the way it always did when she thought of him. Jackson, who felt the west singing to him and who found his soulmate when he chased that song.

But, what sung to her? She pauses for a moment, pink sugar packets still in her hands. She continues putting away the packets and tries to make sense of her thoughts.

Was it being a cop? Was it staying here in New York? Or was it something closer, like red vinyl booths and boys who waited for eight hours?

But truth be told, the thought of soulmates sort of scared her. The dreams were safe and constant, like holding someone back with the sheer force of a palm—but meeting them?

Just knowing they’ve seen your whole life replayed like an after-dark matinee in their heads?

It was nothing short of an invasion of privacy.

Done arranging the sugar packets, she brushes the stray sugar specks from the table and cracks open her book. Still, as she glances up from the book and purses her lips, she wishes that the boy finds his soulmate.

And in her heart, she wishes she finds hers, too.

* * *

When Amy first starts at NYU, she majors in criminal justice. She figures this will be her next step in attending the academy after college, although a Criminal Justice degree isn’t required. Two months into her fall semester, she changes her mind. Instead, Amy changes her major to Art History after a showing at the MET.

The ancient pieces in the museum smell like dusty books and behind their glass houses, they look ready to disintegrate like moth wings.

Kylie tugs on her arm if she spends too long on one piece but, the idea that behind every piece there is a whirlwind of history, lives, hearts and ancient ideas make her dizzy with glee.

It reminds her of the first time that her mother told her of soulmates when she thought back to the first dream that she had of her soulmate. And the weird monumental feeling that came from knowing where he was the day she was born and that he was out there existing and waiting for her.

Most of the time Kylie would roll her eyes at Amy when she described this, calling it ‘dumb’ and ‘cheesy’. All of this changes when Kylie finds her soulmate their spring semester. After that, Kylie spends long stretches describing the color of her soulmate’s eyes and the taste of her lips.

Amy marvels on the irony and wonders how Kylie had met hers so easily. Just a bump in a sandwich shop and _a Hi, I think we’re soulmates._ Or, like her brother Vicente, finding your soulmate in the girl whose pizza you just burned and whose coke you just dropped on the floor.

Nobody really knew why you met your soulmate the day or way that you did. Some wrote it off as a just coincidence and others thought that you needed to strengthen your soul before you met them. Amy always hoped it was because of finicky fate and not because of the growing part because it made her feel like there was something wrong with her. Or them.

* * *

Amy doesn’t date much while in college. Kylie does everything in her power to push her out to parties and towards meeting new guys. Amy remembers Jackson and the heartache she experienced afterward and doesn’t want a repeat. That doesn’t stop Kylie from setting her up with a few guys and it also doesn’t stop Amy from adhering to her self-made rules.

Her next Fall semester, she has her first one night stand with a guy from her British Literature class. The next morning, she glances at herself in the mirror, feeling different. Grown-up. Her back straightens and her smile startles her. Her first one night stand. It feels monumental. A rite of passage of sorts.

Her younger brother, Oliver, now 16, surprises the whole family when he announces that his girlfriend Lydia is pregnant. Her mother nearly faints and her father goes off in a quiet stroll around the neighborhood, trying to keep the anger at bay. Oliver drops out of high school despite Amy’s parents negating and begins working to support the baby that was coming in just four months.

The idea of growing up overnight and having a child with someone that wasn’t even your soulmate frightens Amy. She crafts her life calendar after her baby niece is born. Every single thing she wants to happen she puts into little neat boxes in clear writing. It makes her feel safe and secure, although she feared the future was anything but that.

 _Find soulmate_ , one of the notes reads and Amy hesitates. She wants to press it to her mid-late twenties but knows and feels it’s not then.

So, she stops and presses it between sergeant and lieutenant. It’s more of a dry, almost computic way of putting it there. No heart or soul put into it. Just a mechanical and prudent way of looking it. She looks at it like she looks at a math problem, everything so clean-cut and easy set.

If she was being true to herself, it’d be right now. Right now, before graduation and before the academy; right now, when there’s this sonder feeling in her heart that makes her feel really, really lonely.

* * *

But, on her 21st birthday, the day that Kylie nearly drags her to some bar in Brooklyn, is the first time she’s in the same room as her soulmate and the first time she hears him say her name or touches her.

She doesn’t think that he’s probably inside the same bar she was walking into and even if she did, she could never fathom the weight of such knowledge.

* * *

Amy doesn’t really understand the appeal of bars, especially this one. The bar is packed tonight, bodies flush against one another like neatly packed sardines. It seems everybody is celebrating something. It makes it hard to breathe, hard to think.

Around all the tables and booths sit occupied and Amy stands alongside Kylie awaiting a booth.

A little while later Kylie pushes her way to the bar top to get another drink and Amy concentrates on the pattern of mildew on the ceiling as she tries to ignore her claustrophobic mind. Someone almost steps on her foot and she stumbles back.

It’s at that moment when she decides that enough is enough and battles to find Kylie and push her out of this hell hole, that a hand touches hers.

She stops her trek, disoriented among the constellation of people, like a star colliding into another.

She doesn’t see him five feet away from her. Doesn’t even spot him, but their hearts beat at the same beat and her blood rushes through her veins in discomfort and in surprise.

It’s like she’s shocked down to her marrow, the surprise burrowing deep into her bones, etching itself into every single crevice. It’s what she’s imagined birth to feel. Not the act of giving but receiving, a single shudder and a sigh breathed into one soul and one body.

She runs to the now empty booth in the corner of the room, angering the people that waited for it. With dilated eyes, she shakes and stares at her hand, but no burn mark is present. She scratches it, leaving a red mark etched on her skin.

She hears Kylie call for her and she clears her throat, but nothing comes out. Then, she hears it, a man’s voice, “Amy.” Her neck cranes but she doesn’t see the culprit.

Kylie finds her then, with her pupils as big as Mars but Kylie doesn’t notice.

“Good, you got us a booth,” she says, setting the drinks down. Amy clears her throat.

“I-I heard my name. Did-did you call me?”

“Oh, right.” Kylie rolls her eyes, sipping her drink. “Just some guy I almost bumped into. He was probably drunk. Or high.”

“Or both,” Amy adds although her voice shakes like leaves dancing in the wind and she takes a sip of her drink to stabilize them. Kylie laughs in reply, shrugging one shoulder. They drink in silence for a second and then Amy says, “Tell me about the time you met Evelyn.”

Kylie furrows her eyebrows. “Are you okay? You never want to hear about how I met Evelyn.”’

“I just…” Amy trails off, shaking her head. Kylie raises her eyebrows and Amy licks her lips, leaning in. It’s like she’s telling her a secret or baring her soul. It feels strange and she feels so silly but she can’t stop herself. “I touched someone and I felt like-”

“Woah, wait. You hooked up with someone?” Kylie asks. “God, how long was I gone?”

“I don’t mean-” she starts and shakes her head. “I mean, their hand brushed against mine and I...I don’t know. It was like being electrocuted or something.” she glances back down at her hand again and clears her throat, cheeks blushing in embarrassment.

“I think you’re drunk, Ames,” Kylie says, letting out a small laugh.

Amy shakes her head, ready to continue but clears her throat, letting it drop. Maybe she was making a big deal out of it or maybe she really was drunk. She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, that’s probably it.” she lets out a small laugh, almost a hiccup. “I’m just drunk.”

“Yup,” Kylie says with a grin “and you’re going to get drunker. I’ll be back.” She nods but doesn’t listen.

She thinks back to the moment their hands touched and shivers again. She doesn’t care what Kylie says, she knows what she felt because she still feels it now, like a scar left behind after a bad accident. She chugs the rest of her drink and blinks rapidly, trying to calm her beating heart.

And, there, in that same booth where he would find out who she was. There, in that same bar, they would meet again after a drunk night out. There, she sat and thought about him.

Not knowing that he had walked moments prior and not knowing he was standing outside the bar thinking the same thing.

Not knowing that it would twelve years again till she felt the shock of his touch again or his voice saying her name. Not knowing just how much could change in twelve years and just how in twelve years her neatly arranged life calendar would sit in the trash.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: JAKE part 2. Let me know what you thought in the comments! [My Tumblr](http://www.idlewheelposts.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, welcome to the story that has been living in my laptop's sticky notes for weeks now. I really hope y'all like it! Please let me know what you think. [My Tumblr](http://www.idlewheelposts.tumblr.com)


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